The WSJ reports that Ticketmaster is “experimenting” with eliminating fees:

Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. said Monday that it has started experimenting with the sale of concert tickets without the addition of so-called convenience charges — the widely loathed fees that have stoked consumer backlash against the ticketing giant for years.

The announcement came less than two weeks after the company hired as its chief executive Irving Azoff, the veteran music-industry talent manager whose biggest clients, the Eagles, are also the first act to sell tickets without fees. Mr. Azoff had vowed to make the ticketing giant more friendly to consumers and artists.

Now, this situation is complicated because of Azoff’s involvement and because of his client base’s presumably close dealings with the company from here on in. The Journal story rather sloppily says “without the addition” of the charges, but that’s plainly silly. From the point of view of the Eagles/Ticketmaster borg, you can charge people $200 for a concert ticket and tack on $45 in ticket fees, or you can just sell $245 tickets and divide up the money the way you usually would behind the scenes—but get the added benefit of tootling a horn about “no ticket fees!”

Things will be different when it comes to acts that have an arms-length relationship with Ticketmaster, and of course with venues, which are accustomed to getting, in Sopranos terms, a taste of the fees. It’s not just tradition; that’s how Ticketmaster has kept its monopoly agreements with the venues. The real purpose of the ticket fees is to create a slush fund for kick backs to artists and venues…to preserve the institution of the ticket fees.

With Live Nation having broken off relations, Ticketmaster can’t afford summarily to cut off that cash flow to its allies, so it’s hard to imagine the chunk of change involved not continuing to play a role. (On the other hand, it’s possible that the concert industry is going to be suffering along with the rest of the economy for the next year or two, and that this is seen as a good PR move. Mitigating against that is the fact that tucking the fees back into the ticket price will have the effect of seeming to increase ticket prices, or at least make them higher than they would otherwise be.)

But there are at least two other reasons this seems like an idea that won’t work. For one, advertising that some shows are without ticket fees just calls attention to the ones that still have fees, right? The fees’ genius is that by the time the big AC/DC show rolls around, their memory has faded. Why start reminding people about them?

More importantly, the economics of concert-ticket sales has certain idiosyncrasies. Music fans don’t care where an act is playing or who is presenting it; even if they did they don’t get a choice; and, the key thing, the product being sold isn’t a concert per se: it’s a Radiohead concert, or a Jonas Brothers concert. The consumer isn’t going to throw over Colgate for Crest because of price issues.

The only issue with ticket fees is the lack of upfront disclosure to consumers about the actual price of the product they are buying. Local jurisdictions should just have laws saying that the advertised price has to be the full practical price of the tickets. As for the folks who’d pay $245 to see the Eagles in the first place? They’re on their own.